There's nothing like being a soldier for confidence or learning your limits or enduring utter humiliation.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

We will always return to the private and inviolable act of reading as our culture's way of developing an individual.

I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.

In curved Einsteinian space we are at all times, technically, looking at the back of our own head.

A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

I never intended to be a teacher. I just like going to school and learning things.

Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.

Here is a rule to remember when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is a misfortune " but "To bear this worthily is good fortune."

Boredom is the specter that haunts children from kindergarten to graduation on every continent.

President George Bush declared a National Day of Prayer for Peace. This was after he had carefully arranged and started the war.

Wow, you're awesome and The universe loves a winner, so the universe must really love you!

We do not love each other without changing each other.

My biggest fear is love and getting hurt in love but still believing.

The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.

I read a ton of paper every day. I read the newspapers, I read my intelligence materials, I read all the briefing materials. I read the newspaper in hard copy.